FOREWORD – Major General (Retired) Tim Cross

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FOREWORD – Major General (Retired) Tim Cross Multi-Agency Flood Plan Review Final report Table of Contents 1. Foreword – Major General (Retd) Tim Cross CBE ............................................... 2 2. My approach ........................................................................................................ 2 3. Overview ............................................................................................................. 4 4. Doctrine ............................................................................................................... 6 5. So – the answer to the question? ........................................................................ 7 6. Detailed findings and recommendations .............................................................. 8 7. Written flood plans ............................................................................................... 9 8. Assurance of plood Plans ...................................................................................12 9. The composition of LRFs – and the funding challenges .....................................13 10. National funding and resources ..........................................................................17 11. Training and exercising – including the development of doctrine and the role of the Emergency Planning College ...................................................................18 12. National flood response capability ......................................................................21 13. The Environment Agency ...................................................................................23 14. Military ................................................................................................................25 15. Legislation, guidance and accountability ............................................................26 16. ResilienceDirect (RD) and emerging technologies .............................................27 17. Community resilience and the use of volunteers ................................................29 18. Surface water flooding ........................................................................................32 Annex A – Terms of Reference .................................................................................34 Annex B – Members of the Advisory Group ..............................................................35 Annex C – Organisations involved in flood response planning .................................36 Annex D – Summary of recommendations ...............................................................37 Page 1 of 39 1. Foreword – Major General (Retd) Tim Cross CBE 1.1 I was privileged to act as the independent external reviewer for this work, announced on 3 Nov 2017 by the Secretary of State (S of S) for the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). It ran in parallel with other, wider government reviews – including Defra’s review of surface water flooding and the national security capability review. 1.2 The scale of the issues associated with resilience in England across the board is significant and growing, as reflected by events in Salisbury. Around 5.5 million properties i.e. 1 in 6 - are currently at risk of flooding from rivers, surface water, reservoirs or the sea, and it is clear that the underlying hazards will only increase over the coming decades as a result of climate change and an increasing population living in housing developments built in flood risk areas – and that their expectations are ever more complex and demanding. This review is therefore timely. 1.3 In addition to thanking the whole review team in Defra, the Environment Agency (EA) and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) for their support, I want to particularly note at the outset two key people from Defra – Tom Coles and Michelle Rockley; Tom acted as my ‘Chief of Staff’ and Michelle as the ‘outer office’ organising the administration/meetings/travel. I could not possibly have completed the work so quickly without them and I am very grateful to them both! 2. My approach 2.1 The Terms of Reference are at Annex A. The key question posed by the S of S was, on the face of it, a relatively simple one: “Do Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) in England have robust plans in place to respond to flooding incidents in their respective areas?” 2.2 I decided to take a wide view of what was meant by ‘robust plans’ and ‘response’, not just looking at written plans but the whole process of how the LRFs understood flood risk, made plans and co-ordinated the roles of the many organisations involved. Also, how they trained, exercised, responded, learnt lessons and kept up to speed with evolving good practice – and looked across multi-agency and LRF boundaries to call upon regional and national resources to bolster local arrangements if needed, and indeed help others. I also decided to include at least some discussion on ‘recovery’ within the review, as it seemed to me that the capacity to undertake a protracted and complex recovery effort also required dedicated resources and posed related but separate challenges. Page 2 of 39 2.3 In order to answer the question we needed to look at the effectiveness and consistency of current flood plans in order to identify good practice, advise on how it can be spread and produce improved guidance; hence the three designated work- streams: • An examination by the EA of current Multi-Agency Flood Plans (MAFPs) – around 30 strategic and 300 tactical-level plans – using current guidance as the template. • A qualitative review to identify good practice, the key issues and obstacles and form views and recommendations on the way forward – the bulk of my work; and • The production of revised Defra guidance on how to produce good MAFPs in the light of the review’s findings – due out in the early summer of 2018. 2.4 LRFs are the foundation of England’s emergency planning and response arrangements for a wide range of resilience issues, including flooding. They bring together a number of organisations, including the emergency services and local authorities, and the MAFPs they produce aim to coordinate all of those involved in responding to flooding. 2.5 Recognising that within them were many experts engaged in flood resilience and response planning, and that they were all more than well aware of the issues and good practice that the review sought to identify, I wrote to the Chairs of the LRFs and secretariats and arranged a series of workshops around the country in order to garner views. Ultimately any success in improving LRF planning and preparedness for flooding – and the spreading of good practice – will depend on LRFs acting on the outcome of the review and implementing the revised guidance, so I needed their positive engagement – and I encouraged them to talk frankly and openly! 2.6 I am delighted to say that there was strong buy-in. Each workshop had 15-25 attendees, with around 200 people in all attending nine workshops over three months. They included representatives from every one of the 38 LRFs, the emergency services, local authorities, utility companies, volunteer organisations – and even someone from the Royal Shakespeare Company! These free flowing discussions gave me a good overview of why we needed MAFPs and what they consisted of. Amongst a raft of issues discussed were: • Who writes them and keeps them up to date; • Who reads them – and is held accountable for them; • How are they assured – what training and exercising goes on; • How do they consider cross boundary flood risks; • How are communities and volunteers involved – if at all; Page 3 of 39 • Where the intellectual capital is held – the doctrine – how is it taught and what formal qualifications are available. And of course what funding and resources are available! 2.7 In the course of the review I visited the Army’s Regional Command and the Standing Joint Commander (UK) Headquarters in Aldershot; the Met Office; the Flood Forecasting Centre and the EA’s National Operations Incident Room. I also observed Strategic and Tactical Coordinating Groups (SCG/TCGs) engaging in a major LRF flood exercise in Hull organised by the Trent Catchment Group and Humber LRF; the scenario involved a major river flood inundating parts of many counties. 2.8 I looked at earlier reviews, including the Pitt Review of 2008 and the internal Defra study on flood response preparedness conducted for the then Minister by Brigadier (now Major General) Matt Holmes RM in 2016; I also met with Matt. I attended the LRF Chairs’ conference in Manchester, and had a series of meetings with the Emergency Planning College (EPC), Resilience Direct (RD), the EA, MHCLG and the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) from the Cabinet Office – as well as a number of internal Defra sessions. Everyone concerned provided strong support, the principal organisations being represented at all of the workshops. 2.9 Finally, I also established an ‘Advisory Group’ of specialists in resilience and emergency flood response planning, representing the different regions of England and including the police, fire and rescue service (FRS), local authorities, the EA and the military. Their role was to feed in ideas and, crucially, to be a source of challenge, providing ‘ground-truth’ on the emerging conclusions and recommendations of the report. Further details on the role and membership of this group are at Annex B. We also gathered a ‘consultation list’ of those who wanted to be involved in contributing ideas for the revised guidance – and who would subsequently
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